Black Feminism, Womanism and the Politics of Women of Colour in Europe
Binnenpret, Amsterdam 7th October 2017
Programme
9.00 Welcome: Building Solidarity through Difference
9.30 Parallel Workshops
Black Women and the Black (Digital) Diaspora #1 Room: RPM
Black Women and Digital Diasporas: A Post-Colonial, Global Black Feminist Perspective Tiera Tanksley
(Post-)Independent Women: Navigating Global Africanism and Feminism in the Neo-Liberal Age Dominique Haensell
Resisting, Reshaping and Remembering Media as Black Women in Britain Francesca Sobande
Transfeminism of Colour: Epistemologies, History and Activism Room: OCCII
Claiming the narrative: Transfeminist Perspectives Beyond Toxic Transphobia, Transmisogyny and Transmisogynoir
Developing Women of Colour-led Transfeminist Epistemologies in Politics and International Relations
Undertaking Historical Materialist Readings of Black and Third World, LGBQ Transfeminist Activism for Transfeminist Struggle Today
Nat Raha and Chamindra Weerawardhana
2
Migrant Women in and Beyond Europe Room: ASB
What Colour is a ‘Migrant’ Woman’s Blues? Alecia McKenzie
Black Women’s Health in Europe Jenny Douglas
Participatory Social Research with Racialized Migrant Women: Creating Embodied Transformative Knowledge Umut Erel, Erene Kaptani, Maggie O’Neill and Tracey Reynolds
11.00 Break
11.15 Parallel Workshops
The Politics of Public Space #1 Room: RPM
Avoiding Capture: Brown Women Creating and Defining Their Own Spaces Tia-Monique Uzor
Les Nounous Noires face aux Praton.nes Blanc.he.s /Black Nannies and White Patrons Mwasi Collectif
Young Women ‘On Road’ and In Gangs: A Black Feminist Approach Clare Choak
Will Any Woman Do? Intersectional Approaches to Substantive Political Representation Orlanda Ward
3 Love, Sex and Subjugated Knowledges Room: OCCII
Loving as a Black Woman: A Deconstruction of Misogynoir’s Prism in France Laura Nsafou aka Mrs Roots
Freak Like Me: (Re)claiming Black Female Pleasure Through Black Femme-ininity and the Black Radical and Ratchet Imagination M. Nicole Horsley
The Racialization of Sexual Identities on Constructions of Black Womanhood in Britain Tracey Reynolds
Black Feminist Knowledge Production #1 Room: ASB
Dialogues: Where Black Feminist Epistemology meets Intersubjective Epistemological Approaches to Personhood Abeba Birhane
Active Strategies Of Ethical Relational Change: Bringing Intersectional Exchanges Into The Curriculum Mariana Fernandes
To Exist is To Resist: Reclaiming Intersectionality Geetha Marcus
12.45 – 13.30 Lunch Room: MK2
4 13.30 Parallel Workshops
On the Problems & Possibilities of Black Feminist Activism #1 Room: OCCII
50 Shades of Brown Hélène Christelle Munganyende
Yon Afro: We Came Together, Out Here Yon Afro Collective
Afroféminas en España: La Historia del Blog/Black Women in Spain: The Story of the Blog Antoinette Torres Soler
A Tribe Of Cyborg Griots: Community-Making through Spoken Word Florence Okoye
Black Women and the Black (Digital) Diaspora #2 Room: RPM
Status Quo Operatives and Diaspora: Resisting while Black Stacy Bullard
‘Can I Quote this Blog?’ On Black Women’s Blogs: Redefining Knowledge and Intersectionality in French Academia Fanny Essiye
A Black Feminist’s Guide to Improper Activism Claire Heuchan
5 The Politics of Public Space #2 Room: ASB
‘Taking Up Space’: How to be Visible in a World of Invisibility – A Lesson from #GenerationClapback Siana Bangura
Performing Decoloniality in Public Space: On the Experience of Transdisciplinary Walking Tours in Hamburg Tania Mancheno
Fumble Simone Zeefuik
The Body as a Way to Reconnection: An Interactive Workshop Room: Bullocks
Racism and sexism usually aim to create disconnection - the disconnection from the sense of ourselves, our dignity, our power, our body awareness and from each other as women of colour. Therefore it is crucial for activists, community builders, artists, scholars, practitioners, mothers and lovers to understand how these forms of oppression affect the body, and how this influences our ways of interacting with each other.
This workshop shares a basic understanding of how to approach and integrate the body and how to enhance our capability for body awareness. Through lectures and concrete physical exercises, the workshop will allow the participants to approach the questions raised at the conference from a completely new perspective, a direct physical experience of clarity and reconnection.
The workshop will take place in a protected space with a maximum of 15 participants.
Patricia Brülhart and Pasquale Virginie Rotter
15.00 Break
6
15.15 Parallel Workshops
Black Women and Sex Work: Commodification and Resistance Room: OCCII
Brown Sugar: Sex Work, Colonialism and the Evolution of Black Female Commodification Jheanelle Garriques
Dark Skin, Hour-Glass Figure: The Sexualisation of Dominated Bodies in the Dutch Sex Work Industry Tarah Stèfie Paul
The Invisible Ghanaian Sex Worker Active in the Dutch Sex Industry Amisah Zenabu Bakuri
On the Problems & Possibilities of Black Feminist Activism #2 Room: RPM
Proud Rebels/Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner Too Patricia Kaersenhout
Through Our Lens: Filming Our Resistance. Does the Future look Black in Europe? Dorett Jones
Building Transnational Communities of Activism and Healing through Arts and Cultural Production Stacie CC Graham
Storytelling: Feminist Narratives in Communities of Colour in Berlin Clementine Ewokolo Burnley, Jaya Chakravarti and Larissa Hassoun
7 Black Feminist Knowledge Production #2 Room: ASB
Anti-Blackness in South Asian Spaces Laila Borrie
If It Is Not Black Feminism What Can We Learn From Experience? A Research Journey of Two Sistas Anastesia Nzute and Chijioke Obasi
Black Feminism and the Politics of Representation Tana Nolethu Forrest
16.45 Break
17.00 Keynote: Karin Amatmoekrim Room: OCCII
18.00 Closing remarks: We Make the Road
From 19.00: After Party
We are organising an after party with food, music, film, poetry and dancing.
Poetry readings by Siana Bangura Film screening: Dat Haar!/That Hair! by Bibi Fadlalla Performance of Alien(s)kin: Queer Other Other Lands of Here by Jamika Ajalon + much more!
8 Abstracts
9.30 Parallel Workshops
Black Women and the Black (Digital) Diaspora #1
Black Women and Digital Diasporas: A Post-Colonial, Global Black Feminist Perspective Tiera Tanksley
By operationalizing a post-colonial, global Black feminist lens, this study illuminates the illicit connections between the historically anchored and institutionally sanctioned exploitation of Black women and the untempered success of the IT industry. Around the globe, physical, mental and sexual terror are systematically leveraged against Black women in order to foster the creation, consumption and deconstruction of 21st century IT products.
The triangular liaisons between Africa, Europe and North America remain intact even after the age of European imperialism has supposedly ended. Women laborers work in and around mines in the Congo to extract minerals used to devise mobile phones and motherboards; Black female prisoners are contracted out in the US and Europe to Microsoft, IBM, and Verizon to assemble hardware and field customer service calls; Black women are employed by YouTube as content mediators tasked with curating all of the violent, racist, and misogynistic content uploaded to social media platforms; video vixens and reality TV actresses embodying racialized stereotypes generate boundless profit for international media networks like BET, VH1, and MTV; and e-waste from Europe and North America is systematically disposed of in Africa, where Black women and girls labor in electronic graveyards as scrap collectors and water vendors. Indeed, the vestiges of imperialism are unceasingly apparent in the mechanization of neoslavery and the recreation of a digitized Middle Passage.
By unearthing the IT industry’s reliance upon Black female bodies, this study aims to theorize a post-colonial, intercontinental Black feminist technology lens that can: 1) disrupt the normative construction of technology creation, consumption and disposal as postracial and ungendered; 2) unearth the invisible, indispensable role Black women play in the global success of the IT industry; 3) to build intersectional coalitions that can intervene upon Black female oppression worldwide; and 4) foster collective healing by centralizing the oft-ignored voices and experiences of everyday Black women.
9 (Post-)Independent Women – Navigating Global Africanism and Feminism in the Neo-Liberal Age Dominique Haensell
As both celebrated self-identification and critical site of contestation, the lifeline and aftermath of the term Afropolitanism is indicative of a global shift towards novel cultural representations of people of African descent. Critiques of elitism such as Binyavanga Wainaina’s scathing rebuke, “I am a Pan- Africanist, not an Afropolitan”, have not hindered the concept to spawn a myriad of related practices, lifestyles and aesthetics. The web series An African City makes no secret of the cultural politics and aesthetics it shares with Sex and the City, in aiming to empower African women and change common misrepresentations of the continent. Yet, if one would want to develop this idea further, Sex and the City, for all its impact, has become emblematic for a distinct moment in Western feminism that theorists like Angela McRobbie or Nancy Fraser identify as an ostensibly post-feminist disavowal of 2nd wave feminism’s political achievements. Can we say that something similar is taking place in respect to certain representations of global Africanism? Is the discourse on the fluidity, mobility and multiplicity of racial and cultural identity mainly operating in the logic of late-capitalism? Where do the visionary claims of Pan-Africanism fall short, if the language of self-empowerment so easily lends itself to neoliberal co-optation? Taking Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s hugely successful novel Americanah as well as the author’s political persona as case in point, this paper tentatively draws an analogy between discourses on the contemporary Western feminist and the cosmopolitan African while paying careful attention to points of intersection and departure.
Resisting, Reshaping and Remembering Media as Black Women in Britain Francesca Sobande
Since the proliferation of digital media platforms in recent years, Black Women have engaged in both online and offline activity that relates to their resistance of marginalising mass-media. This includes efforts to reshape media landscapes through content production, such as in the form of blogs and vlogs. The experiences of Black women in Britain, as media producers and spectators, has received relatively scarce attention. This research sheds light on some of such activity, whilst elaborating on prior studies of Black women's engagement with media. As part of this, there is a focus on the somewhat shared media spectator experiences of Black women who grew up in Britain amidst the age of television channel Trouble (1997-2009), and the ‘Black girl power’ embodied by bands such as Cleopatra.
10 The comments of some of the 23 Black women who were interviewed, contribute to a collective and nostalgic memory of what depictions of Blackness on British television ‘once were’. In turn, they offer insight into the influence of such content in the lives of Black girls and young women in Britain in the late 90s and early 21st century. Whilst conducting this research, I was confronted by my own gaze as a Black woman, a doctoral researcher, as well as a producer and spectator of media content. Considering such matters involved me trying to explore and express these thoughts in ways that were reflective of the often visual focus of this work.
Transfeminism of colour: Epistemologies, History and Activism
Nat Raha and Chamindra Weerawardhana
This panel will bring together three cutting-edge, Trans women of colour thinkers, working on critical Transfeminist epistemologists, political activism and praxis.1 Weerawardhana and Raha will discuss the local and regional (United Kingdom and European Union) and global contexts of critical Transfeminist activist work and theory, contemporary and historical, lead by Trans women of colour, that centres the voices and ideas of precarious, poor, queer, working class, and/or sex worker Trans people and/or of the Global South. Such work includes gender and social justice activism, and challenging structural and material oppressions from below – including civil, military and NGO-industrial complexes and restrictive, discriminatory ‘border’ and ‘body’ politics. The panellists affirm this work in the context of transmisogynoir coupled to an inclination to mute the voices of Trans women of colour.
The work presented in this panel will also draw on our lived experiences as Trans women of colour in the Western, neoliberal university, where our positions, research, contributions, wage labour and our very existence are constantly challenged and put into question.
The papers presented will focus on three core points, which are strongly informed and inspired by our committed activism within and outside the academy, and our day-to-day travails for self-expression, survival, to claim basic rights for dignity, and the formulate a new radical Transfeminist politics. The core themes evoked are as follows:
1 In order to highlight the lived experiences and epistemological focus on Trans womanhood and Transfeminisms-of-colour, we capitalise ‘T’ of the words ‘Trans’ ‘Transgender, and ‘Transfeminist at all times. In highlighting the vital importance of Global South feminism/s, Afrofeminist epistemologies and Indigenous feminist thought to Transfeminist-of-colour thought, we shall systematically use the upper case when using these terms in all material related to this panel.
11 1. “Claiming the narrative”: Transfeminist perspectives beyond toxic transphobia, transmisogyny and transmisogynoir 2. Developing Women of Colour-led Transfeminist epistemologies, and their vital relevance and utility to the spheres of politics and international relations 3. Undertaking historical materialist readings of Black and Third World, LGBQ Transfeminist activism that can vitalise transfeminist struggle today
Migrant Women in and Beyond Europe
What Colour is a ‘Migrant’ Woman’s Blues? Alecia McKenzie
Through a reading of works (poetry, excerpts from short stories) about the female migration experience, accompanied by jazz improvisation, this presentation brings together the writing and music of two artists currently based in France: Jamaican writer Alecia McKenzie and American singer Denise King. Their Jamericazz project draws on women’s oral storytelling traditions and jazz improvisation in the Americas, and examines the theme of “developing transnational, intersectional and intergenerational coalitions”, while also focusing on the role of music and storytelling in a womanist space.
Black Women’s Health in Europe Jenny Douglas
The aim of this paper is to explore the ways in which mobility and migration has affected Black women’s health. Inequalities in health in Black women are enduring. Research on inequalities in health highlights the relatively poor health of Black women due to their demographic, social, education and economic profiles (Nazroo et al. 2007). In the UK, Black women experience a higher incidence of diabetes, hypertension and stroke (Lane et al, 2005; Collins and Johnson, 2008). In addition, Black Caribbean women with breast cancer have a significantly worse survival rate (Bowen, 2008; Jack et al, 2009). In relation to mental health, the research emphasis has been on Black Caribbean men with high rates of serious mental illness, while Black women have been seemingly ignored (Edge, 2013). The reproductive and sexual health of Black women is also of concern.
In the UK, policy and health service developments focusing on the health of Black and Minority ethnic health issues have failed to account for the specificity of Black Caribbean women’s health and wellbeing. The inequalities that Black women face in education, employment, health and social care
12 because of their racialised, gendered and classed experience are detrimental to their health and have a major impact on their life chances (Douglas and Watson, 2013).
This paper will examine the impact of migration on the health of Black women in the UK and calls for more research on the health of Black women in Europe, particularly examining the health experiences and health status of migrants and refugees. While health is central to the racialised, gendered and classed experience of Black women, too often it is left off the black feminist agenda. This paper aims to address that lack.
Participatory social research with racialized migrant women: creating embodied transformative knowledge Umut Erel, Erene Kaptani, Maggie O’Neill and Tracey Reynolds
This paper discusses the potential of participatory social research in addressing the experiences of Black and racialized migrant women in the UK. The presentation will present preliminary analysis from our project combining forum theatre techniques and walking methods in order to understand the way in which three groups of migrant women - i) migrant mothers ii) migrant adolescent girls and iii) Black migrant mothers with no recourse to public funds - build shared knowledges. Together with researchers, the participants create and reflect on their subjugated knowledges in an embodied way through these methods. By applying these methods (principally Playback, Forum Theatre and Mobile and Walking methods) to think about the connection between personal experience, policy and social structures, the women develop collective voices that make visible and challenge racist state practices, and everyday cultures. As a result of doing so, they bring about social transformation.
In particular our work with a group of mothers with No Recourse to Public Funds highlighted the racist ways in which they are constructed as outsiders to the care of the nation. Their connections to the UK through colonial ties with their home countries, as well as their long term involvement with local British life through paid and unpaid work has been systematically discounted to construct them as outsiders not entitled to state resources. The work with these methods helped to articulate a counter discourse highlighting instead the injustices of this policy. We also highlight that epistemologically, the combination of methods (walking and participatory theatre methods) as embodied, sensual methods can mutually reinforce each other and can be used to create more textured and rich data. Combining these methods connect the personal to the public realm and vice versa given the
13 biographical, performative, spatial and visual material emerging from each method. The methodological innovation of this project, we argue can be useful for enriching Black Feminist theory and allowing coproduction of knowledge between researchers, participants and activists.
11.15 Parallel Workshops
The Politics of Public Space #1
Avoiding Capture – Brown Women Creating and Defining their own Spaces Tia-Monique Uzor
Artist with Brown skin often face more challenges than their white counterparts when it comes negotiating the dance industry in the UK. These artists are often subjugated into a ‘Black Dance Box’, operating within this area often leaves artists with the burden of representation, or restricted to specific programming where culture or identity is a theme.
Four female artists that are transcending this space are: Alesandra Seutin, Vicki Igbokwe and the Duo from Project O, Alexandrina Hemsley and Jamila Johnson-Small. These artists have intentionally positioned themselves away from the space marked out for them. These women exist within the in- between space (see Bhabha 1994,84), within their identity they are neither African/ African Diasporic or European, yet identify with both due to their heritages, this filters down into their movement vocabulary which exists in between the space of two distinct cultures, and portrays the experience of those that live within in it. They are, as many of us are, products of the new diasporas created by post-colonial migration (Hall in Murdoch 2007), and the distinctiveness of this position allows for such creativity to be cultivated.
The proposed paper will detail the diverse spaces that these artists have created, it will utilise primary data collected from interviews conducted in late 2015. Identifying and drawing attention to these spaces is important as they are spaces that future generations can aspire to create within. Building these spaces could contribute in breaking brown artists out of the black dance box in the UK, and into more mainstream contemporary dance spaces.
14 Les nounous noires face aux praton.nes blanc.he.s / Black Nannies and White Patrons Mwasi Collectif
Les chercheurs.euses qui se penchent sur la question du travail des femmes migrantes font face à la question de l’intersectionnalité des dominations. Dans les travaux de chercheuses comme Armelle Testenoire, des extraits d'entretiens avec des directeurs-trices d'agences de nourrices, qui té moignent du caractè re ethno-racial des straté gies de recrutement. Les femmes africaines sont dé crites comme "maternelles", "habitué es" car ayant beaucoup d'enfants. Elles sont souvent dites plus fiables, plus respectueuses que les femmes arabes par exemple.
Dans l’ouvrage “Qui gardera nos enfants ? Les nounous et les mè res”, Caroline Ibos s'interroge sur les rapports entre la "nounou", dont le profil est souvent celui d'une femme ayant migré depuis un pays d'Afrique de l'Ouest et son employeuse, blanche, ayant un emploi souvent à temps plein dans une caté gorie socioprofessionnelle é levé e.
Face à l’augmentation de l'activité des femmes, on s'aperç oit que les femmes blanches dé lè guent le "travail" d’é ducation des enfants à ces femmes africaines ou afrodescendantes. Les femmes noires sont ici utilisé es pour ré é quilibrer le partage des tâ ches domestiques, entre les couples de blanc.he.s, et permettre aux blanches de s’é manciper. La libé ration des femmes blanches bourgeoises ou de classe moyenne se fait au dé triment de celle des femmes noires occupant ces emplois.
Par ailleurs, le discours dominant vé hicule l’idé e que les parentes noir.e.s sont absent.e.s de l’é ducation de leurs enfants. Ces nounous se retrouvent souvent à faire plus de 40 heures par semaine et ont leurs propres enfants dont elles doivent s’occuper. elles se retrouvent alors contraintes à consacrer plus de temps à é lever les enfants des autres qu’aux leurs, comme en té moigne par exemple une nounou à Caroline Ibos : "Tu penses tout le temps à ton bé bé là -bas en t'occupant du bé bé que tu as sous la main". Il faut donc penser la charge é motionnelle qu’elles supportent avec deux familles à charge.
Young women ‘on road’ and in gangs: A Black Feminist approach Clare Choak
The voices of young women, especially those of colour, are spectacularly silenced in the field of subcultures. Little is known about how they experience
15 life in deprived communities and which resistance strategies are employed. Subcultural theory in the UK has historically focused its attention on White working class men, while females have been relegated to sexual objects and peripheral to delinquent activities. It has been argued that women, particularly women of colour, experience higher levels of strain within these marginalised spaces in terms of the added pressures of gender and race discrimination (Naffine 1997). A lack of agency has been attributed to young women in these contexts, rather than being exploited victims, they are often central to the workings of these groups.
My empirical research takes a Black Feminist approach in order to explore the intersectionality of class, gender and race - replacing additive models with interlocking ones (Collins 2009). I sought out a feminism which was able to speak for all women, regardless of their colour and social positioning. Whilst Black feminism is plural rather than unified, its inclusivity (hooks 1982) made it the most appropriate choice in order to study the impact of racial oppression and structural inequalities. Based on qualitative interview data from young women and practitioners in London, I will discuss how females in marginalised communities respond to their environments by engaging in deviant subcultures. The focus will be problematising the racialised term ‘gang’, the myth of the angry Black woman, and explanations behind young women’s involvement in group offending.
Will any woman do? Intersectional approaches to substantive political representation Orlanda Ward
Drawing on recent US scholarship, this paper lays out the theoretical and empirical implications of examining racial and gendered substantive political representation from an intersectional theoretical framework. It then lays out a concrete agenda for future research in this area, focusing on the European context.
As the number of female representatives in national legislatures has risen, gender and politics research has sought to document and interrogate the links between descriptive and substantive representation. While both concepts remain contested, key lines of enquiry include whether presence of female political representatives (descriptive representation) leads to the advancement of women’s interests (substantive representation), and under what conditions this occurs. However, an important critique of this work is its tendency to treat women as homogenous, typically obscuring the experiences of women of colour.
16
Meanwhile, political parties are increasingly ‘diversity’ among their representatives. For example, prior to 2010 only three black women had ever been elected to the British House of Commons, all from the Labour Party. Over just two general elections, that number has risen to 21, including the first Muslim and Conservative MPs who are women of colour. Similar patterns can be observed in other European countries, such as Sweden and France. These empirical developments strengthen both imperatives and opportunities to investigate women’s substantive political representation within an intersectional theoretical framework. Key questions include: how do political representatives who are women of colour seek to define and enact racial and gendered substantive political representation, and what are the relevant barriers opportunities and outcomes in legislative chambers and beyond? Similarly, to what extent and how do policy priorities and issue frames vary among female legislators of varying racial and religious identities in European parliaments?
Love, Sex and Subjugated Knowledges
Loving as a Black woman: A deconstruction of misogynoir’s prism in France Laura Nsafou aka Mrs Roots
From slavery to nowadays, black women’s sexuality has been trivialized. It has served a colonial imaginary which influenced the treatment of black women’s body, in a political, healthcare and personal context. With a revival of Afrofeminism in France in 2013, black women face harassment because of their political engagement, and are systematically attacked on their sexuality.
I. Black women’s sexuality in French colonial imaginary
This part will focus on hypersexualization of black women in France. Misogynoir will be exposed through testimonies of French black women, who have been victims of racist remarks in intimate situations. From these examples, we’ll explore French colonial imaginary and how it affects black women nowadays.
II. Naming French Black women’ pleasure
Afrofeminism includes hashtag highlighting. This part will show how black women are dispossessed of their sexuality on social networks
17 III. « Sex it away » : Calling out misogynoir culture through art and public space
Examples of reappropriation of sex by Black women through arts.
A. Clit Revowlution, poetry by the poet Nefta Poetry. B. Collection Gynaeceum III: woman and her pleasure ; painting of the visual artist Claudie Titty Dimbeng. C. Monstres d’amour, play of Rebecca Chaillon in a play : eating the other on stage as a metaphor of love and sex. Freak Like Me: (Re)claiming Black Female Pleasure Through Black Femme-ininity and the Black Radical & Ratchet Imagination M. Nicole Horsley
This paper employs a Black femme perspective to consider the rationale and sex economies of the “freak” as it has been conceived by the Black radical and ratchet imagery in Europe and the U.S. The freak serves as a form of mediation that affirms the quality of Black women’s human life, body, sexual experiences, and sexuality to address distorted representations that have been dispossessed of erotic, joyful, and pleasurable meaning. Through a Black diasporic freak[ing], working-class cis and trans Black femmes re- imagine Black sexual paradigms to extend the politics of pleasure that signals the emergence of new visual and sonic practices and activism and maps a pathway for Black femme futures. This paper responds to the historically excessive sexualization of Black bodies by the White racist and heteronormative imagination and (re)claims the freak as a site of pleasure and radical possibilities.
The racialization of sexual identities on constructions of black womanhood in Britain Tracey Reynolds
In contemporary Britain anchored by racialized and gendered discourses of the nation and national belonging key constructions of black womanhood have been mobilised to legitimate racialized and legitimate gender and racialized ‘otherness’. Within, the article the key constructions specifically highlighted are the Black Mammy , Dominating Matriarch, ‘Babymother’; ‘ and the Jezebel. At the root of these images there exists a complex and denigrating mythology about black women’s sexuality. In this paper, I explore how sexuality provides an important starting point for understanding and contextualising black women’s experiences. These images mask the structural arrangements that maintain systemic racial
18 inequality, which result in black women being blamed for their ‘‘failed’’ gender performances rather than the broader systems and structures of inequality that persist in society. I therefore draw on Black feminist theory, and its approach to intersectionality to identify the extent to which, issues of sexuality and sexual identity act as markers of being non-normative, deviant, and ‘pathological’ for black women
Black Feminist Knowledge Production #1
Dialogues: Where Black feminist epistemology meets intersubjective epistemological approaches to personhood Abeba Birhane
In her book ‘Black Feminist Thought’ Patricia Hill Collins argues that the current dominant epistemology which predominantly represents Western elite white male interests, which Collins calls ‘Eurocentric masculinist epistemology’, fails to capture Black women’s experiences. Since, this dominant epistemology which she closely associates with Positivism, fails to capture Black women’s experience, she proposes a Black feminist epistemology. Collins points out that the absence of dialogicity and the exclusion of “subjugated knowledge” are among the criticisms that demonstrate the inadequacies of positivist epistemology, not only to capture, explain, and theorise about Black women but also the general deep rooted problems that the positivist epistemology needs to consider, evaluate and incorporate.
Dialogues, according to Collins are one of the criteria for Black women’s knowledge production and knowledge validation process. Extensive dialogue and not to become a detached observer of stories, is important for invoking a dimension of Afrocentric feminist epistemology. Ideas cannot be divorced from the individuals who create and share them. Individual expressiveness, appropriateness of emotions in dialogues, and the capacity for empathy is something African American communities place great emphasis on.
Similarly, within the wider intersubjective approaches in cognitive science, dialogism, for instance, positivist inspired epistemologies are also considered inadequate and problematic for they, to a large extent, ignore our dialogical, relational and embodied nature and the reciprocal relationships between self, other and world. The importance of dialogues not only are missing from the positivist epistemology as Collins points out, but from Western epistemology in general and from our modern conception of the self.
19 Modern Western epistemology, Platonism being the archetypal example, is dominated by perspectives that have rejected the validity of dialogues and our embodied lived experience in favour of theoretical constructions. Yet, this dominant epistemology has been foundational in how we have come to conceptualise personhood and knowledge, especially within the human sciences. As abstract thinking is privileged at the expense of dialogism, the production of knowledge is rooted in the solitary subject. If our epistemologies are to account for black women’s experiences as well as to reflect the complex, ambiguous, and interactive nature of selves as they co- exist within a shared life world, we need to adopt a dialogical world view.
Active Strategies Of Ethical Relational Change: Bringing Intersectional Exchanges Into The Curriculum Mariana Fernandes
This presentation offers an approach to queer pedagogy that combines a way of doing street politics with feminist, queer and postcolonial theories, and is activated in an art educational setting.
Thinking from a position where feminism is shaped by the urgencies of responding to a dictatorial socio-political reality, solidarity must be performed through an amalgamation of distinct bodies offering their presence in support for each other. This solidarity requires no questioning, no judgement, no expectations, its necessity emerges due to the vulnerability and precarity in which people who fall under certain categories are forced to live in. Being conscious about consequences certain acts have, and taking the decision to stand against them, mirrors what it means to live socially and politically together. It defines respect and equality as core values when working towards social change, while working with the reality that lived experiences are not equal.
Queer pedagogy has been concerned with the weight mainstream education has on the students' identity formation: it questions how knowledge is taught through western canons, it strives for social inclusion without the imposition of norms or names, and it aims at the empowerment of students' agency. Some of the points addressed in queer pedagogy overlap with feminist and radical pedagogical approaches; I focus on queer pedagogy because it encompasses a broader spectrum of concerns, allowing ideas to merge in ways that embody the aforementioned values across gender, age, social status and ethnic background, reflecting what Angela Davis (2016) calls solidarity across differences.
20 Active strategies of ethical relational change are a missing link between political and critical theories and their practical realization. Thus, this presentation proposes a mobilization of methods based on my practice- based research teaching undergraduates, which opens a reflection on possibilities for social change that start in the educational system.
To Exist is To Resist: Reclaiming Intersectionality Geetha Marcus
In this paper, I explore how intersectionality as a theoretical and analytical framework has been used and abused since it was first formally introduced as a concept (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991). Intersectionality challenges mainstream feminism by displacing essentialised notions of women and the universalisation of white middle class women’s experiences. It centres the experiences of women of colour, and Black women in feminist theory and emancipatory practice. Intersectionality is also a political challenge to white supremacy in feminist politics and feminist social science (Mirza, 2009; Bilge, 2014). However, today the term is often misappropriated, its function misused, and its history misrepresented, unacknowledged or simply erased. This paper offers a fresh look at the history of intersectionality, its roots embedded in the pernicious subjugation of Black women in the United States, and how it has been operationalised to address and support European Black feminist politics.
13.30 Parallel Workshops
On the Problems & Possibilities of Black Feminist Activism #1
50 shades of brown Hélène Christelle Munganyende
It was raining today in Brussels. But it weren’t the city’s smug air and dark clouds sitting over my head, that were wetting the surface of my cheeks. I was crying bittersweet tears of December blues. The taste of childhood memories of zwarte piet lingered on my lips. The national feast was one of the main symptoms of everyday racism that led me to leave the country 5 years earlier, with hopes of finding a place to call home in the European capital. But I would soon come to realize that even in this predominantly brown city, my blackness would become subject to exclusion by my fellow citizens of colour.
21 The expression of anti-blackness is not limited to white people, just like sexism is not limited to white men. This specific form of anti-blackness, expressed by non black people of color, was first coined by psychiatrist Frantz Fanon under the name né grophobie. Afro-phobia within communities of color persists and allows for the false notion of political blackness in Europe. In the Netherlands we recognize this in the underrepresentation of Afro-Dutch people in parliament and in the inability to articulate Afro-specific topics in media and journalism.
Communities of colour that fell victim to Indian Ocean slave trade and occupation, navigated concepts of whiteness and blackness, by distancing themselves from blackness (Ghandi, 1896). Today, this shared history poses an estranged relationship between Europeans of colour. In the Netherlands and Brussels, derogatory terms such as ‘abeed’ and ‘coolie’ belong to the urban lingo of youth of colour. Such examples of anti-blackness embedded in popular culture of young people, show us the urgency of Afropean research and education. Between non-black Dutch people of colour and Afro- Dutch people, we need to move from false political blackness to truthful collective solidarity.
Yon Afro: We came together, out here Yon Afro Collective
We came together, in 2016, as passionate women of colour who often felt isolated and 'out here' in Scotland, which tends to be overlooked as part of discussion of Black and minority ethnic (BME) lives in Britain.
We came together, united by our shared experiences of living in a society where we frequently feel invisible, (mis)represented and oppressed.
We came together, and organised - over food, drinks, online, in the afternoon, in the evening, in public places, at our homes, amidst laughter and background noise.
We came together, to reclaim our voices, through a shared space where we feel safe, understood, supported, and a sense of sisterhood that many of us had been searching for.
We came together, to reflect on the scarce documentation of the lives, narratives, and work of women of colour in Scotland, whose voices we seek to record and amplify when we can.
22 This presentation is a collective outcome of some of our stories, as individuals, friends, and sisters. These concern experiences of both living and organising as women of colour in Scotland.
In speaking and showcasing images and artefacts created as part of our efforts to archive the encounters of women of colour in Scotland, we hope to do just that: share some of our/their narratives.
Whilst telling you about who we are, why we are here, and what Yon Afro is, we hope to learn more about, listen to, and engage with the lived experiences of women of colour from elsewhere in Europe.
We came together, out here.
Afroféminas en España: La Historia del Blog/Black Women in Spain: The Story of the Blog Antoinette Torres Soler
Afroféminas es un blog que tiene como actividad fundamental, visibilizar a la mujer negra que vive en España. Es un proyecto de empoderamiento y a la vez de emprendimiento. Empoderamiento: Porque sirve de inspiración, apoyamos a las mujeres negras, visibilizamos sus discursos a través de sus reflexiones y testimonios para que en ningún caso crean que son anecdóticos sino que son discursos objetivos, muy reales, aunque eso sí, invisibles.
Les ofrecemos referentes. Y esto es para que de alguna manera no sientan el vacío que sentí yo al comenzar. No me veía representada ni mediática ni socialmente. Se nos representa como mujeres con escasa educación, pocos estudios o ninguno, sin opinión, sin fuerza para emprender, dependientes de una figura patriarcal que en caso de ser un hombre blanco se entiende en más ocasiones de las que me gustaría que si se ha casado con nosotras sería por nuestro cuerpo, sexualidad y exostismo , pero jamás por nuestra inteligencia y también belleza. Hoy Afroféminas está buscando oportunidades a mujeres negras y frecorre todo el país dando conferencias de feminismo negro, microrracismos. Somos referente en el mundo de habla hispana.
A Tribe Of Cyborg Griots - Community making through Spoken Word Florence Okoye
In the opening scenes of ‘Space is the Place’, the camera pans over an otherworldly jungle as Sun Ra introduces us to a place where “the vibrations
23 are different, not like on planet [Earth]”. Here is a colony, “set up… for black people …[to] see what they can do with a planet on their own...” Unlike Sun Ra’s vision of ‘Space [as] the place’, in ‘The Parable of the Talents’, Butler’s visions of a fledgling outsider society is one which is practically achieved on this planet and yet, much like Sun Ra’s ‘Space’, is made reachable both to us as readers and to the newly formed community via revelatory songs, narratives of change. Similar to the sonic myth making of Jangle Monae, the creation of narrative is the process which can teleport the black person to the Place where they can be truly free.
Meanwhile, in Birmingham, (UK), the ArtivistUK[1] collective gathers together poets, artists, performers and creatives to share untold stories and bring together a communal reimagining of the black experience. The space acts as a focal point, a liminal place where the cyber meets the flesh, as stories previously inaccessible, become known thanks to the quasi-infinite reaches of cyberspace (seen here as a re-imagining Sun Ra’s ‘Space is the Place’) and retold through the poet’s body.
Following Moya Bailey’s theory of digital alchemy, where ‘everyday digital media is transformed into social justice media magic’, through interviews, ethnographic research and digital narrative, I will argue that spaces such as Herstory are another step in creating intersectional digital communities where the poet is both conduit and cyborg, located as they are in real time yet part of a continuous feedback loop with cyberspace raising a locally bound yet globally aware political consciousness.
Black Women and the Black (Digital) Diaspora #2
Status quo operatives & diaspora: resisting while black Stacy Bullard
This work provides an analysis of the relationship between Black American and Black European cultural resistance through the Gramscian lens of cultural hegemony.
The paper positions the Black American cultural resistance movement-- oversimplified for the purpose of argument--as a bourgeoisie class within the context of an international community of global Black diaspora comprised of disparate Black identities and bodies of organizing.
The underrepresentation, and arguably erasure of the Black European experience in the contemporary 'Western' movement of Black liberation will
24 be looked to with the support of various mediums documenting Black political organizing and direct actions in London during the Fall through Spring of 2015 to 16, as well as examples from the mimetic dispersal of Black American cultural resistance through European society - with reaches as deep as this conference's online landing page [Liberté, Egalité, Beyoncé].
Black America, as the manufacturers and beneficiaries of the cultural industries of Black resistance, actively coerces organized labor within European diaspora in service of a specifically American one. This enlisted labor adopts a outside resistant identity that overlooks distinct conditions of oppression in Black communities as they exist in their respective white societies.
This work argues that the consumption and adoption of American cultural productions, done in search of a global solidarity of Black resistance, delimits the European's ability to dismantle racist indoctrinations within their non- American context. In doing so, this relationship of consumption and adoption distracts from the radical potential of economic and cultural Black repatriation, a proposition unique to Black neo-colonial European experience.
“Can I Quote this Blog?” On Black Women’s Blogs, redefining knowledge and intersectionality in French Academia Fanny Essiye
As a master’s student in political science, I had the opportunity to have access to Kimberle Crenshaw’s iconic text on intersectionnality in my different courses. We had the pleasure to discuss Black American Feminist authors and scholars, and it helped me greatly to gain knowledge critical race theory, gender theory and more. It also put into the light the glaring absence of French and Francophone black women texts, critics, analysis and, lets be honest, existence in French academic corpuses. While I was devouring bell hooks or Patricia Hill Collins words, I was wondering why I couldn’t read such analysis or genius produced in the European, and more precisely, in the French context. Where were the Black French or Francophone) women in the French academia, and more precisely in the political/sociologist area?
This reflexion came at an very interesting time: thanks to Internet, I was able to find some Black French women who were currently PHD students, such as Rose Ndengue who is studying the involvement of Camerounian women in the decolonial war, or scholars such as Nadia Yala Kisukidi professor in the
25 philosophy department at Université de Paris VIII or Silyane Larcher, a researcher in the CNRS, but they weren’t that much. And the history of Black Women in French academia were completely erased /forgotten. Because of my involvement in French Afrofeminists groups, I could be able to find and read a lot of French/Francophone Black women’s blogs, Facebook pages or groups, full of non academic knowledge about French/francophone black women history. At the same time, a lot of Afrofeminist women (sometimes teenage girls) used social media such as Twitter to spread that knowledge, especially the word and the theory of intersectionality through Afrofeminism onto mainstream (especially French black) audience.
I would want to discuss how those media and networks built by French and francophone black women permitted a larger access to texts that were only discussed in an overwhelmingly white elite sphere in French academia spaces. Yet, the intellectual material and the intellectual labor aren’t recognized as such by the academia and it fuels the erasure and the marginalization of French and Francophone BW, their work(s), and put those material and their own persons at risks (plagiarism, racialized and gendered harassment, etc) without social, academic or monetary rewarding for the writers. It would be interesting to discuss the way that Francophone and French Black Women, put at the margins even in the academia, challenged and challenge this space and the way we think about this notion of knowledge.
A Black Feminist’s Guide to Improper Activism Claire Heuchan
Academics and activists alike have observed a relationship between Black feminist activism and digital spaces, in particular that more women of colour gain voice and platform as a result of online spaces created by the advent of digital technology (Hill Collins & Bilge, 2016; Jarmon, 2013). As new media – in particular social media – lack the traditional gatekeeping that defines the parameters of old media, there is a greater democracy; both regarding who engages in public discourse and, crucially, whose voice gains traction and is heard. This activist perspective explores how Black feminist activist spaces are created in a digital context, considering how sites of resistance are established and maintained online.
The legitimacy of cultural production as a form of activism has long been called into question, with blogging frequently disregarded as a form of public diary writing of little significance to collective struggle. Yet cultural activism contributes to the raising of feminist consciousness and the shaping
26 of public discourse (Mendez, 2015) to reflect intersectional (Crenshaw, 1997) feminist principles. The cultural/intellectual activist catalyses critical reflection that is essential to achieving best practice through activism (Hill Collins, 2012).
In addition, the barriers of cost and access are lowered (if not removed) in the development of Black feminist activism and the subsequent development of feminist communities online – as inclusivity is a key tenet of Black feminist praxis (hooks, 2000), the possibilities created by the internet as a site of Black feminist activism are worth exploring in full irrespective of whether digital locations or cultural production receive ‘mainstream’ recognition as ‘proper’ activism. Therefore I offer a perspective on activism rooted in Black feminist praxis that is proudly improper, a perspective inspired by my time blogging as Sister Outrider.
The Politics of Public Space #2
‘Taking Up Space’: How to be Visible in a world of Invisibility – a lesson from #GenerationClapback Siana Bangura
This paper will look at how #GenerationClapback (a term coined by writer, poet, activist, and performer Siana Bangura) – marked by their DIY spirit, frustration, ‘wokeness’, creativity, search for belonging, and hunger to (un)learn and decolonise – navigate spaces hostile to their very existence, yet in which they are forced to reside. How does this millennial generation of young people take up space and use alternative media, artivisim, writing, innovation, and endless streams of creativity to usurp the status quo and clapback at their respective societies? Using the concept of ‘Taking Up Space’ as defined by Black British Intersectional Feminist platform No Fly on the WALL as a segway into conversation, we will profile organisations, events, platforms, and individuals at the forefront of the movement, embodying its revolutionary spirit.
From hosiery brand Panty Hoez to online zine Gal-Dem; the podcasting pioneers of Shout Out Network, the founders of Dream Nation – a movement of Practical Dreamers; Black Ballad, Consented UK, BBZ London, publishing houses such as Haus of Liberated Reading; Facebook groups such as Bun/ Babylon, as well as social media movements such as #BlackGirlMagic, #BlackGirlJoy, #BlackWomenDidThat, and of course #BLackLivesMatter – now a global movement offline also – we will explore questions of identity, deconstruction, reconstruction, decolonising, (un)learning, reimagining, and
27 defining culture. We will also look at the challenges facing this new generation of pioneers and innovators as well as how their work, experiences, triumphs and challenges are firmly rooted in traditions and movements that precede them as well as questioning what the future may look like for them. With community and the search for belonging at the heart of the movement, we will interrogate the ways in which #GenerationClapback build community using limited resources from Whatsapp group messages to sista circles and monthly gatherings in collectively run spaces such as Common House, DIY Space for London, and Mayday Rooms. Why is it revolutionary to reclaim and take up physical space in the city – a place increasingly more gentrified, hostile, and inaccessible in every send of the word?
We will also touch upon the ways in which film culture has been used to aid clapback culture, profiling films such as Generation Revolution, 1500 & Counting and Youtube shorts such as ‘Strolling’, ‘Ackee and Saltfish’, ‘Roll Safe’, and the work of the Elijah Quarshie. We will also briefly touch upon the soundtrack to this generation’s resistance: Grime. To conclude the discussion, we will look forward to solutions and the part we can play in the movement in Europe and beyond.
Performing decoloniality in the public space. On the experience of transdisciplinary walking tours in Hamburg. Tania Mancheno
I am a woman of color living in Germany. I am a writer and performer of postcolonial and decolonial walking tours in the HafenCity, the harbor quarter in Hamburg. This German city enormously benefited from colonial exploitation in Asia, Africa and Latin America. I have been working in this field for the last 5 years. In my presentation, I would like to share some of my experiences of cooperation, and conflict with colleague and fellow activists, the municipality of the city, public theatre, as well as with the audiences attending the walking tours – all of these structures and actors being mostly white.
I would like to reflect on the different dimensions of performing decoloniality in the public realm and space by highlighting two dimensions: First, I shall describe the work-process in developing alternative cartographies of urban meaning and history that seek visualizing the voices of non-white forgers of history. Secondly, I shall reflect on the many-faced obstacles against the visualization of the (post-)colonial landscapes, biographies and cartographies of the city. Finally, I shall share with you some of the strategies of resistance that I have developed through my experience to engage with these conflicts.
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In this context, I would like to focus on the difficulties of defining oneself as an activist and thinker, without falling into the traps of institutional manipulation or the marketization of non-white knowledge, while at the same time being subjected to threats of institutional manipulation, non-recognition of intellectual authorship and the making invisible of ones own work.
Fumble Simone Zeefuik
As cousin Kendrick praises a Richard Pryor afro but presents a DeBarge- esque curl on a light-skinned woman, we are reminded yet again of these cross-community, trans-diasporic longings to hollow Blackness to the point that its definition becomes as loose as “warm”, “nice” or “satire”. Within NL- based Black communities, there aren’t many dark-skinned Black* women who are the faces or embodiments of political resistance movements countering Eurocentric beauty ideals, anti-Blackness and/or anti-Muslim plus anti- Immigrant violence. How many NL-based platforms that celebrate natural hair do so with seven dark-skinned Sisters with a short, type 4c afro on their banner? Who celebrates the dark-skinned Sisters that don’t have “edgy” or supermodel looks? Who ‘didn’t see it coming’ when the dark-skinned Sister raises her voice or catches feelings?
Aside from the Black communities, NL-based non-Black women of colour are making it their 9-to-midnight to assure us that making Black synonymous to “non-white” is where it’s at. Which, as long as Black women can’t throw on identities like “politically Arab” or “politically Indonesian”, of course means that Blackness is a one way street towards relevance, a boulevard paved by the same Sisters that can easily be excluded from conversations about anti- Blackness with regards to feminism, religion, forced migration and popular culture.
The arena’s of pro-Blackness and over-inclusive Blackness have at least one thing in common: both create, provide and/or continuously nurture environments that either ignore dark-skinned Black women or trap us in checklists that are deeply rooted in commercial(ized) and stereotypical ideas of ratio, intellect, political priorities and beauty. So how does this ongoing erasure affect the current realities of leadership and representation in the Netherlands? How to shape and secure safety in feminist, womanist and/or other activist spaces where colourism is both phrased and acknowledged as an intersection as impactful as race?
29 The Body as a Way to Reconnection: An Interactive Workshop Patricia Brülhart and Pasquale Virginie Rotter
Racism and sexism usually aim to create disconnection - the disconnection from the sense of ourselves, our dignity, our power, our body awareness and from each other as Women of Colour. Therefore it's crucial for activists, community builders, artists, scholars, practitioners, mothers and lovers to understand how these forms of oppression affect the body, and how this influences our ways of interacting with each other. From this perspective, the body is seen as memory and medium for all kind of strategies for survival. Still, many of these strategies are merely embodied reactions to any violent experience we've ever encountered and ultimately perpetuate the status quo through repetition. Bodywork is a holistic way of dealing with experiences of oppression, an effective way of developing empowerment and can lead to solidarity strategies of all kinds.
The workshop shares a basic understanding of how to approach and integrate the body and how to enhance our capability for body awareness. Through lectures and concrete physical exercises, the workshop will allow the participants to approach the questions raised at the conference from a completely new perspective, a direct physical experience of clarity and reconnection. This may open new perspectives and enlarge their scope of actions for the future work.
The workshop will take place in a protected space with a maximum of 15 participants.
15.15 Parallel Workshops
Black Women and Sex Work: Commodification and Resistance
Brown Sugar: Sex Work, Colonialism and the Evolution of Black Female Commodification Jheanelle Garriques
In the mid-1400s the first transatlantic slave ships reached the shores of Africa marking what would be four centuries of horrendous exploitation of the Black body. These bodies were forced to claim new identities as the property of their European owners, a relationship that was particularly complex for Black women. Placées (legally recognized Black escorts) like Marie-Thérèse Metoyer or Eulalie de Mandéville demonstrate an extensive
30 history of objectification and sexualization of the Black female body by European men. In a colonialist society where White men could so easily infiltrate and exploit them, Black women had to employ subversive means of defending their bodies and their self-worth. Almost 200 years later, not much has changed.
White patriarchal society has continued to abuse, oppress, and diminish the value of Black bodies everywhere. The pervasiveness of this subjugation has caused many Black females to seek alternative means of developing fiscal security and personal autonomy, namely sex work. Drawing connections to the colonialist practice of plaçage, I will use interviews with Black sugar babies to investigate the evolution of commodification of the Black female body. And more importantly, how our ability to choose how, to whom, and at what cost we are sold has given us power over White men and White patriarchal society in general.
These interviews will be in the style of “body narratives” a form developed in my narrative therapy project, Naked Narratives. Participants will share real experiences they’ve had with their White European male clients, using different parts of the body as writing topics (i.e. hands, eyes, lips). This process is all at once therapeutic and analytical, providing an in-depth view on the intersections of race and sex work. Moreover, it is a chance to explore the variety of ways Black women can empower themselves in a White European hegemony.
Dark Skin, Hour-Glass Figure: The Sexualisation of Dominated Bodies in the Dutch Sex Work Industry Tarah Stefie Paul
The purpose of this research is to analyze the sexualization of Black female bodies in the Dutch context of sex work. Within the global sex trade, women of colour are constantly regarded as victims of sex trafficking without any sexual agency. Particularly in European countries such as Spain and Italy, this continuous narrative is often associated with Black sex workers from West African countries. While there is plenty literature on how racial hierarchy effects Black women in the sex work industry of the United States, such relevant research does not exist in Europe. My goal is to broaden and deconstruct the images of Black female bodies and set its narrative in the Netherlands. I examine the life stories of Black sex workers to understand how they negotiate, strategize and utilize images, blackness and racial stereotypes when attracting or seducing male clients and how, in that process, Black sex workers feel confident and empowered. However, some
31 women break from those images as they develop original and clever ways to attract male clients.
The invisible Ghanaian sex worker active in the Dutch sex industry Amisah Zenabu Bakuri
By bringing all the social, political, economic as well as religious elements that set the storm for women's involvement in sex work, this paper analyses the highly complex lives of female Ghanaian migrants involved in sex work in the Netherlands. In doing so, this paper challenges the static and rather normative binary categories of “good” versus “bad” and “religious” versus “non-religious” that are produced in the literature and discussion of sex work. This binary approach is likely to portray the lives of female migrants involved in sex work in a rather one-sided way. This paper argues that by including all the elements entangled in women’s involvement of sex work is highly relevant in studies of transnational sex work, this will enable individuals to grasp the complexity of the lives of female migrants involved in sex work. This study uses qualitative methodology such as in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions to gather data from Ghanaian migrants, as well as carrying out a review of extant literature on migration and sex work for additional insight on the lives of sex workers. This work highlights that individual women juggle their social status as migrants with sex work which is challenging. As migrants, they have to obtain enough money to maintain their ascribed elevated social status but need to make sure that relatives and friends do not know how this money is obtained. Consequently, there is a conscious effort to be secretive as many Ghanaians remain highly censorious about sex work.
On the Problems & Possibilities of Black Feminist Activism #2
Proud Rebels/Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner Too Patricia Kaersenhout
Proud Rebels is a project about an important black feminist wave which took place in the 80s. I honored the forgotten heroines with portrait cloths and a short film and I brought them together for the first time since 25 years. The young generation of Dutch black feminists who didn’t know about their existence became aware of an important legacy. To create a win-win situation I had the portrait cloths of the feminists embroidered by young girls in Dakar who are in a vulnerable economical position. It also gave a deeper meaning to the portraits.
32 Guess who’s coming to dinner too? Currently I am working on a community project in which I critically quote The Dinner Party of Judy Chicago. This time 36 women of color who are erased and forgotten by Western history are honored. I returned to Dakar to have the tablecloths embroidered by young girls. In the Netherlands the embroidery will be continued by undocumented refugee women, women of color and white women. In contrary to Judy’s art piece I will involve men. Together with a fashion designer we designed suits. On the linen I’ve printed the histories of the forgotten heroines of color. Men are literally carrying the history of women on their body. They will perform a Haka for women. By revealing forgotten histories I try to regain dignity. This presentation outlines subversive, self-sustaining and sentimental elements of the media market experiences of Black women in Britain. It accounts for how these are often plugged into a wider online Black women's collective consciousness. In discussing these matters, a brief video is included to illustrate encounters and reflections that shaped this research.
Through Our Lens: Filming Our Resistance. Does the Future look Black in Europe? Dorett Jones
How can we use creative platforms to connect, resist, build movement and organise as black women within our collective spaces? I offer to screen a short film about one such theme and build discussions on current debates. We continue to see the rise of fascism across the global north, and we experience increased visibility for us as black women. We continue to organise, create platforms and build movement, across difference; woman, LGBT, age, ‘race’, class and disability rights. However, documenting our herstories as a visual record and archive is neither new nor radical, yet always necessary and revolutionary. Whether I call myself water spirit, black feminist, womanist, or infinite consciousness; our different and similar narratives must be captured in this climate of heightened racism, xenophobia and oppression. Whilst the political and socioeconomic ground continues to shift under our feet, is it incumbent upon on us to keep creating and [re]claiming innovative ways to connect resist and build? if so, in what ways and through what media is this possible?
For me, being a filmmaker and cultural producer presents a creative vehicle in which to capture voice, affect change and influence policy. I created a short film which documents women, children, staff and volunteers from an ending violence against black women and girls (VAWG) organisation in Rotherham, England, who travelled to Central London and marched to
33 Downing Street, Whitehall to hand in a petition to the government in protest against the brutal cuts to black organisations ending VAWG services across the country.
This visual record provides one type of platform to archive moments of our womanist activism and demands for social justice. Can we develop similar creative strategies across Europe in the struggle, whilst building connection and organising?
Building Transnational Communities of Activism and Healing through Arts and Cultural Production Stacie CC Graham
Today's activist communities are characterised by the fact that they are grass- roots community-led organisations with flat hierarchies, many of which are led by (queer) Black women, who seek to utilise the learnings of past activist generations in order to create a more sustainable way of working. The exchange and overlap between activism and academia has become apparent in both the use of language as well as through the members of the community. For example, the term “intersectional” - coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw– is ubiquitous today when discussing feminism. And academics such as Cathy Cohen, who works closely with the Black Youth Project 100, lead the way in forging insights between empirical academic research and community experience.
However, activism takes place in many environments beyond street protests and lecture halls. In this presentation another bridge is elucidated: arts and culture. On the basis of the question of possibilities to adopt, infiltrate or produce alternative contexts, a dialogue on the different strategies should emerge, how Black women and women of colour, as creative artists and culture producers, can counteract institutional, systemic, structural and everyday racism, sexism, as well as their experiences of marginalisation and non-representation in a white supremacist society. Strategies can be practiced as an expression of protest; they can also be implemented in form of resistance via new structures and spaces abandoning inclusion as the highest good. Relying on two frameworks, art exhibitions and event series such as Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter (extending to the UK) and self care networks such as Harriet's Apothecary and OYA: Body-Mind- Sprit Retreats, the potential of the extent to which arts and culture contribute to the activist and political conversation of Black women and women of colour in Europe is illustrated.
34 Storytelling: feminist narratives in communities of colour in Berlin Clementine Ewokolo Burnley, Jaya Chakravarti and Larissa Hassoun
All feminists are not all the same. Our differences are important to explain how we “do” feminist political resistance and why sometimes feminist coalitions are hard to sustain. “We” speak from three different positions: continental African, first generation migrant feminist; second generation European/ South Asian feminist; and European/ Middle Eastern feminist. We think that these positions can be productively compared to European or US Black diasporic feminist positions.
This presentation draws on experiences of feminist practice from a cis-gender perspective within Black communities and communities of colour in Berlin, in a context where all political parties have shifted to the right of the political spectrum. Much work has been done in building feminist coalitions between communities with different racial and sexual identities in Germany. However, discourses of citizenship, economic marginalisation, and class continue to structure how feminist political consciousness is formed and expressed in Berlin. Developing coalitions between transnational feminist coalitions (of colour, non-African) /African diaspora (US dominance)/ continental African is as essential as it is challenging.
We would like to offer an activist narrative on the situation over the past four years, in the form of short stories, videos and accompanying discussion.
Black Feminist Knowledge Production #2
Anti-blackness in South Asian Spaces Laila Borrie
Taking as valid criticisms, the problematic nature of terms like “PoC” and “WoC” because this (framing) in many ways centers ‘whiteness’ (making it normative), while simultaneously lumping together and erasing the differences and hierarchies that exist between people of colour, this paper aims to discuss the important issue of anti-blackness and how it operates in South Asian spaces and communities. While British colonialism undoubtedly helped solidify caste and colour divisions on the subcontinent, South Asia’s problems with racism / colourism / discrimination have deeper roots, that need to be explored in order for the present relationship between brown and black people to be placed in context. Aspirational whiteness and a burgeoning South Asian middle class tie into modern narratives that present white and black as a binary between progressive and backwards that
35 facilitates discriminatory and often downright violent behavioural patterns to develop between our communities. It is concepts like these that this paper will attempt to understand while also trying to offer constructive solutions that allow for diverse and heterogeneous black and brown communities to develop and thrive outside of white supremacist binaries.
If It Is Not Black Feminism What Can We Learn From Experience? A Research Journey of Two Sistas Anastesia Nzute and Chijioke Obasi
The paper draws on the research experiences of two Black women of Nigerian Igbo ethnicity reflecting on their researcher/participant interchanges while undertaking their PhD study. By way of reflexive discussions, the authors highlight both differing and similar experience of identity negotiations they faced whilst navigating the fluidity in ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ encounters throughout their research journey. Both researchers undertook their research within British universities, with the first researcher, Nigerian- born Anastesia returning to Nigeria to collect data from Nigerian women in order to give voice to the experiences of rural women, to consider how their viewpoints, perspectives, and imaginings might contribute to the fight for a malaria-free Nigeria. The second researcher British-born Chijioke undertook her research with Black women (hearing) and culturally Deaf women (white) exploring their experiences of working in UK public sector organisations. Intersectional perspectives on identity, power and researcher positioning form a central part of the reflections of both researchers. Having turned towards then away from black feminism as a theoretical framework for analysis, Anastesia and Chijioke discuss their final decisions to use Africana Womanism in the case of Anastesia and ‘Africanist Sista-hood in Britain’ for Chijioke.
The paper makes significant contribution to existing debates about ‘insider/outsider’ research and the impact of ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’ between researcher and participant. Taking a reflexive approach to their research discussions the authors raise a number of questions: How do we respond to the voices of Black women who have expressed their dissatisfaction with the constraints of the history and terminology of feminism (whatever its form)? How important is it for Black female researchers to examine the impacts of the identity of the researcher, participants and the various identity interchanges that take place? How can intersectional analyses help us to face the challenge of defining collective and individual experiences of Black womanhood?
36 Black Feminism and the Politics of Representation Tana Nolethu Forrest
When thinking about Black feminism it is important to unpack what is meant by this term – who defines what it means to be black? Who defines what it means to be a feminist? Who determines what it means to be a Black feminist? Who is invited into the conversation through the mobilisation of this term and what discourses are utilised to teach us about the meaning behind this term? Who has created these discourses and where do they come from?
In this paper, I will seek to answer these questions through an autoethnographic analysis of what I have learned about Black feminism from both a South African and a British university. This paper will argue that Black feminism is multifaceted and context specific, meaning it takes on different forms in different places and spaces. In light of this, I will engage with the question of how to carve out spaces in Western academia and feminist discourses in general, in which we recognise and engage with the experiences of women of colour from countries outside of the West. By this I mean, women of colour who have grown up in countries outside of the West – women of colour who live and breathe within the constructs of the Third world/Global South/Developing world. I will argue that we cannot think about Black feminism without recognising the complexities and nuances of women of colour’s experiences, how these experiences vary according to context and the ways in which some of these experiences may be silenced or marginalised in Black feminist discourses as a result of the domination western countries have historically exerted over countries and peoples in “the Global South” which continues to inform inequalities in the present.
37 This event is made possible by generous support from:
The Department of Sociology, University of Warwick
Cover Image: Lawdy Mama (1969), Barkley L. Hendricks
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